As part of the massive deployment of federal law enforcement and even active duty troops to Los Angeles, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection‘s Air and Marine Operations (AMO) department has been flying MQ-9 Predator B drones over the city. CBP has been flying these unmanned aircraft since 2005 in service of their mission of detecting illegal border crossings. Now, they are being used to conduct aerial surveillance of the protests against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. LA is a fair distance from the border, and the protestors are not crossing it anyway, meaning the drones are getting used outside of their main mission.
This isn’t the first time they’ve been pulled into domestic surveillance duty. During the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, CBP flew them over Minneapolis to keep eye on the protestors there. This drew swift criticism at the time, including by Democratic members of Congress, and Predators do not appear to have been used for this purpose again until now. That said, aerial surveillance of protests, notably by helicopters, is a common practice. The question now is whether unmanned platforms will start being used more regularly, particularly under an aggressive Trump administration.
How Predators are being used in LA
The Predator B drones (which are called “Reapers” in their military variation) used by CBP are strictly surveillance aircraft; they are not armed with any ordnance. While they do have radar systems, those are mostly useful for detecting vehicles; what’s relevant here is their electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors, basically cameras capable of seeing into both visible and infrared spectrums. Eyes in the sky, in other words.
The Department of Homeland Security has released some footage captured by the Predators on X, cut with some intimidating music in a clear effort to push a specific narrative (the post’s text, “California politicians must call off their rioting mob,” is not exactly subtle or, for that matter, accurate). Low-rent movie trailer music aside, the footage does demonstrate the drone’s ability to capture wide-angle shots of the situation.
For what it’s worth, CBP told The War Zone that the drones are specifically “providing officer safety surveillance” and are “not engaged in the surveillance of First Amendment activities.” Given that clashes with protestors is what’s at issue, though, that’s functionally not much of a distinction.
